THE BERRY MEADOW ARCHIVE - Mountain Light School

and Northwest branches had never actually been lost, but were substantially held together by Sam during
the intervening years. A couple remarkable black and white pictures in one of Evelyn‟s scrapbooks—
probably from Grandpa Scheuerman, show Sam and Esther on one of their visits to Endicott sitting with
our great aunts—their first cousins.
Esther Talbert, Sam Scheirman, Elizabeth Repp, Katherine Lust, and Yost Scheuerman
Endicott, Washington, c. 1956
During his first visit to the Pacific Northwest in 1961, Bill was introduced to family members
with whom he had been corresponding for several years, principally those related to Henry B.
Scheuerman‟s daughter, Mae Poffenroth Geier, and her nephew, Herman “Spot” Lust. Family elders recal
that reunions had been held each summer since at least the 1940s and the earliest dated photograph of
such a gathering is from July 1946. It shows a host of Scheuermans, Litzenbergers, Lusts, Klewenos,
Repps, and Reiches enjoying a picnic among the shade trees next to Endicott‟s Trinity Lutheran Church
and the John and Elizabeth Repp home. Aunt Lizzie Repp lived in a tidy white clapboard house adjacent
to the parsonage and in a characteristic act of kindness later willed her property to the church so children
at Sunday School would have an area to play. In her letter to the church, Aunt Lizzie recalled that the
place had also once belonged to her mother-in-law, Mary “Grandma” Repp, famed in the community for
her hospitality and humor, and whose “home welcomed many a newcomer at a Sunday service.”
In a letter of October 1, 1961 to his Aunt Esther (Scheirman) Talbert, Bill wrote of his 1961
journey to Endicott from Alberta and gives some indication of his persistent spirit: “I went and met Lena
Honstead in Spokane. On the way south the next day I decided to stop briefly at Endicott, though we
ended up staying several hours. I was sorry to miss Mae Geier, but could not have told her until the day
before we left Calgary what day we would come through. I went to her house and her next door neighbor
took me to her daughter‟s house, but she was gone, too. Next we went to Karl‟s house, but he wasn‟t
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